International Conference @ DMC College | Goa
#goamusings #thedaytoday
1st March 2024
Early in the morning today, I went for a stroll down the streets of Mapusa, Goa, and I was quite fascinated by all things Goan!
Their architecture especially is something that requires a vivid detailed description in a separate post altogether!
This Portuguese architectural legacy beautifully blends the Mughal, the European and the Indian into an amalgam that gives Goan architecture its own unique aura of sorts!
On either side of the roads – one could see roadside shops selling eggs, milk and coconuts in makeshift tables spread out for the purpose!
And these temporary shops disappear within two hours into the morning, when traffic reaches its peak, and the sun gets into ‘intense’ mode! 😊
DMC College is situated in a lovely hill that overlooks the Mapusa region of Goa.
We all had our breakfast in College. So happy to see two of our students from Chennai had made it to this Conference. Gautham who is presenting his paper, said that he had come all the way from Chennai to Goa, to present his first paper. So proud of you Gautham and Ezhil!
Sharp at 10 am, the Conference started in the Conference Hall. The invited guests lit the lamp, and this was followed by the Key Note Address by Dr. Vivek Sachdeva, Professor & Dean, University School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GGSIP University, New Delhi.
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| The Mobile Book Van @ the Conference Venue |
His talk was on the topic, ‘New Cinema Form and Shifting Ideologies’.
Confining the scope of his talk to Hindi Cinema, Professor Vivek spoke about the impact of OTT and the new avenues for film distribution, that have changed the way films are made today, and on how we understand the OTT platform as a ‘new space’.
This ‘new space’ must be seen in relation to globalization, liberalization, digital revolution, and the post-pandemic scenario, etc, and for this this I'll fall back on narrative theory, he said.
Excerpts from his talk -
By new spaces, I mean, OTT has opened up new platforms – today, Turkish, Iranian, Korean films and a lot of South Indian films are made available online, based on subscriptions.
Moreover, they are simultaneously dubbed into multiple languages as well.
Some Hindi films were released on Amazon Prime even before they could be released on screen.
They've created a neo-cultural space for cinema through the OTT Platform.
This new space is an alternative space!
However, this alternative space is also controlled by consumerist ideology.
It's not a space of enunciation or alternative ideology but only a space for alternative consumption!
It has changed the relationship of viewers with cinema.
The old cinema was based on class-based stratification where those who cannot afford the luxury seats, were often seated in the front rows, or on the ground!
Imaginary communities watched the same movie together.
The use of Hindustani language also became a tool of resistance against British Raj.
It contributed towards fostering and imagining the nation.
Immediately after independence, depictions in Indian cinema included, themes of reforming rich brats or hardened criminals, and the challenges before India as a young nation, and the responsibility of young Indians towards society.
The poor were a regular constituent of the cinemas of the 1950s.
In contrast, the nature of cinema changed after the introduction of multiplexes. It increased the cost of living, and the poor were excluded from these cinema halls.
Films like Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994) offered a spectrum of affluence. The folk songs and traditional rituals and Diwali celebrations have influenced society to such an extent that society has become bollywoodised! In short, Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! has become the paradigm or the very epitome of a family movie!
New cinema today is made with the newly emerging New Middle class, with the beginning of liberalization in India.
The new middle class with better pay package gave a fillip to consumerism.
These spaces were ‘spaces of consumption’ were food, high-priced popcorn and cinema were consumed at the same place!
Privatization of internet services with ‘broader’ bandwidth gave boost to video content on internet.
The first OTT was BigFlix launched by Reliance Entertainment in 2008.
The policies of liberalization allowed Amazon [2016] and Netflix [2017] to set shop in the Indian market, as a result of free economy.
Movies began to be watched in laptops, and became a highly personalized experience which has eventually affected the form, and the narrative experience as well!
A new genre, the Web series - a serialized form of narrative emerged because of the OTT Platforms.
TV adaptations of serialized visual Narratives.
However when it comes to OTT, the content part is tutored.
TV serials and TV series are different in their essence and they are based on the structure of narratives.
Web series like Mirzapur are based on crimes in remote parts of India. The Delhi police in fact appreciated the makers, because it was so close in the storyline to the Delhi police records.
[But we must also remember it is just a narrative of Delhi police record.] 😊
The tone and tenor of representation changes in web series.
Mirzapur – the TV series highlights the nexus between money power and political power in society.
It tells the pressures of middle-class families, happily married women, their hidden sexualities etc.
This way focalisation assumes significance here.
Crime is no longer contained to the metropolis. Mumbai is not only a city of opportunities now but also a city of crime.
It differs from Italian new realism as well. It makes the films deceptively realistic, since they're made of lesser-known casts and crew as well. It lacks the dramatic acting and sounds which are associated with Bollywood.
These pseudo-realistic movies produced a reified image of rural India that's originally not there.
Away from the family, it gives them an individualised perspective to experience a story away from the gaze.
One drawback of these crime thriller series is that, they fail to give a socio-economic perspective to the crime, which used to be part of the new cinema of the 1950s.
Newly imagined gender roles are also shown, which blurs our perspective towards good and evil.
OTT has given space for alternative Narratives that have not found a space on big screen. Eg. Deepa Mehta!
OTTs hence are like online parlours with different packages.
They have emerged as an alternative space with new kinds of Narratives, but they have also become capitalistic!
OTTs have hence resulted in affecting the other forms and modes of cinema produced in the country.
In the context of ideology and habitus, the question that I would like to leave with you today is –
Do you think art can transcend these metrics?
Signed off Dr. Vivek Sachdeva!
Then Dr. Geetha Bakilapadavu spoke on ‘Film and Ideology’.
Dr. Geetha is with BITS Pilani, Goa Campus.
Dr. Krishna Manavalli, Professor & Chairperson, Dept of English, University of Mysore, spoke next on ‘Christie Calling: Adaptations of Agatha Christie in Hindi Cinema’.
She began her talk with an interesting anecdote!
The queen of crime fiction – Agatha Christie - after a failed marriage and a traumatic divorce, or rather two years after her divorce, while visiting friends on an expedition in Iraq - she chanced upon Max Mallowan, an archaeologist who was 14 years her junior.
She found him quite engaging. But Max was sceptical, and so he asked her -
I don’t think you’d find life with me interesting. Won’t you be disturbed by the fact that so much of my work has to do with corpses?
She reassured him: "I adore corpses and stiffs."
With that began an exhilarating romance, and they lived happily ever after. 😊
The genre of whodunit films.. hasn't received much justice, said Dr. Krishna.
Where's the reader in the translation?
Where's the viewer in the adaptation?
asked Dr. Krishna, before signing off on her Plenary Session!
On the whole, it was a very engaging morning session of Plenary Talks!
In the afternoon, while going for our lunch, all of a sudden, I saw a familiar voice beckoning me from quite nearby!
It was Dr. Susan Deborah! 😊
It’s been ages since we had last met in Goa, some six years ago, and so it was so delightful to meet up with Susan. We missed meeting up with Rayson though! [Rayson, btw, is Professor with BITS Pilani, Goa Campus.]
She had arrived just in time to chair the afternoon’s session.
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| With the Speakers, Paper Presenters and the Organisers |
I was so happy that we could talk over our lunch together.
It also reminded me of our vibrant Assam sojourn that had happened exactly 12 years ago, where we had presented our papers in the Conference in which Professor Gayatri Spivak was the Key-Note Speaker! 😊
It was such a joy for all three of us back then, to spend three days in the intellectual company of Professor Spivak in Sibsagar College, Assam.
PS: You may want to read more about our memorable Assam Sojourn, and our rendezvous with Professor Spivak, on our past post HERE.
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